Castorp

by Pawel Huelle

Though a delightful chatty read, this is also an intellectually challenging book. It is a prequel to The Magic Mountain but you won't need to be familiar with Thomas Mann to enjoy this voyage of self-discovery. The German hero succumbs to the lure of the East: an enigmatic Polish woman. But Huelle writes from a post-colonial perspective and shows Castorp being changed by his contact with a different culture.

Extract

The moment Castorp turned his gaze on them, the man leaned towards his female companion, took hold of her wrist and said: 'The situation is serious. That is politics.'
Only now, as the woman pulled her hand sharply from his grip and raised her head impulsively, did Castorp see her face. The blend of something that in a flash of intuition he immediately defined as the Slavonic type of beauty competed in her with a faraway, subtle, yet palpable breath of the East.
'I hate politics,' she said. 'You know how much. Even in my letters I cannot bear to tell you.'

Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Parallels

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

The Red and the Black by Stendhal

happysad

funnyserious

safedisturbing

expectedunpredictable

larger than lifedown to earth

beautifuldisgusting

gentleviolent

easydemanding

no sexsex

conventionalunusual

optimisticbleak

shortlong

Character

Race

Black2

White5

Asian1

Mixed race3

Other culture4

Non-human6

Age

0-251

26-502

51-753

76+4

Sexuality

Straight2

Gay1

Bisexual3

Gender

Male1

Female2

We are working to add Non-binary to our gender choices. In the meantime, if you know any books with non-binary main characters you think we should include, please let us know.